Hard seeds are prevented from germinating by a water-impermeable seed coat, and for many years this has been considered to be a dormancy mechanism. Scientists from Kew, the University of Bergen and the University of Sheffield ...

Hunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates. However, the hunting also has other negative consequences. The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by ...

(Phys.org)—A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter, UK, have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. Inspired by nature, the researchers identified and replicated ...

Elementary school students often learn that plants grow toward the light. This seems straightforward, but in reality, the genes and pathways that allow plants to grow and move in response to their environment are not fully ...

Look out the window and you're likely to see the dispersal of seeds—dandelion tufts in the wind, a squirrel burying an acorn, a robin flying off with a dogwood fruit. You might even have a burr "velcroed" to your sock.

A team of Michigan State University researchers will soon be heading into the rainforests of Nicaragua to help an endangered species known as a Baird's tapir co-exist with local farmers whose crops are being threatened by ...

(Phys.org)—The 'brightest' thing in nature, the Pollia condensata fruit, does not get its blue colour from pigment but instead uses structural colour – a method of reflecting light of particular wavelengths- new research ...

Big seeds produced by many tropical trees were probably once ingested and then defecated whole by huge mammals called gomphotheres that dispersed the seeds over large distances. But gomphotheres were probably hunted to extinction ...